Three long-time aircraft-spotters from the Netherlands show you a selection of pictures out of their personal collections. Especially featured is the memorable Republic (R) F-84F Thunderstreak / Thunderflash fighter bomber and recce aircraft.

The 2014 Open Days of the Royal Netherlands Air Force took place at Gilze Rijen AB both on June 20th and 21st and Hans was present on Saturday the 21st , working his way through the crowd and taking the pictures shown in this gallery.

The 1978 Tiger Meet was held at Kleine Brogel AB (Belgium) from 19-26 June. Participating were the air arms of 10 different countries including Norway, Greece and Portugal. On 23 June KB was open to the public and on Saturday 24 June the 31 squadron ‘Tiger’ area was open to the public. Both Frank and Hans visited the event.

Frank only incidentally visited Soesterberg AB , but Hans frequented the former Air Base quite often because he moved to the province of Utrecht (where Soesterberg is located) at the end of the Sixties , after having made his living in Eindhoven . So he (also) became a Soesterberg AB “home” spotter and he already has published a lot of his Soesterberg pictures elsewhere on the web. The picture-gallery on our website shows a limited selection of pictures not only of the aircraft of the resident American “Royal” squadron , The Wolfhounds , but also of various other planes that were stationed at Soesterberg AB or only paid a visit over the years. They were all taken from outside the base.

On 11-12 July 1972 Frank and Hans were invited to visit the NATO Helicopter Meet that was organized at Naval Air Station Lee-on-Solent, in Britain. The flight to and fro was made in Fokker F-27 “C-8” of the K.Lu. Participating to the Meet were delegations from the RAF (Whirlwind helis),Royal Navy (Wessex-helis), USAFE (Huskies), R.Danish Navy (Alouette IIIs), R.Danish Air Force (Sikorsky S-61s), R.Neth.AF (Alouette IIIs) , R.Neth.Navy (Agusta-Bell UH-1s) , French Navy (Alouette IIIs) , WGAF (Bell UH-1s), WGNavy (Sikorsky H-34s) and Italian AF (Agusta-Bell 204Bs).

The 80th anniversary of the Koninklijke Luchtmacht was celebrated with an Open Day at Eindhoven on July 3rd, 1993.

Amongst the many aircraft especially significant were present the USAF’s F-117 “Stealth”-fighter , the Victor-tanker and a KC-10 . The former East-Block-countries participated with the Hungarian MIG-23 , the Czech Sukhoi SU-25 , the MIG-29 , the Czech L-39 Albatros-trainer and an Antonov AN-12 transport. Interesting helicopter-types being present were a.o. the Polish PZL-Sokol w.3 and the Czech MIL Mi-17.

Thousands of people attended this Open Day and Hans and Frank were also among the crowd.

On June 21st and 22nd, 1980 two Open Days were held at Bierset AB in Belgium and it was one of the first times that a Belgian F-16 was shown in public. There were so few people visiting the Open Day on the 21st , making Hans think for a while that the organizers had assembled the aircraft on static especially for him…! Despite the less favourable weather conditions he took some colour-slides.